


Bodies In Love

by bamfsback (anomalagous)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:06:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalagous/pseuds/bamfsback
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodies, and how we view them, from outside and from within. Kurtty, fluff, mild angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He found her, once, when he'd thought she was working late instead, standing in his bedroom in her underwear. As alluring a proposition as that would have seemed in almost literally _any_ other context, Kurt could tell just by looking at her for even the briefest of moments that this wasn't a prelude to any sort of connection beneath the sheets. He had a _sneaking suspicion_ the only reason she was actually in his bedroom at all, where she could be discovered, was that _he_ had a full length mirror. She'd parked herself in front of it, all of her weight shifted onto one leg, hands on her hips. The expression on her face as she looked over the image of her reflection was downright _scrutinous_ , clearly displeased with a visage that gave _him_ so much pleasure.

 He made a point of stepping into the light before he stepped into Kitty's line of vision, moving slowly and deliberately so that she couldn't think he was trying to sneak up on her. Still, there was some fluid grace in the way he moved that he couldn't school out of his stride, a little _hint_ of predatory stalk to his gait and tail as he slipped into view behind her in the mirror, the afterimage of the effect she had on him these days, a skin he couldn't shed even if he'd wanted to. "Something the matter, _meine liebe?_ "

 Kitty gave a short snorting sound and looked up, meeting his eyes through the rebound of the mirror and over her own shoulder. Her hands came up off of her hips long enough to gesture to her body. "My boobs are too small."

 Kurt raised one dark eyebrow into the fringe of his hair, and said nothing.

 She took this to mean he was inviting more criticism of her physique, so she broke eye contact to look down at herself, the exasperated motion moving downwards towards her legs. "And my _butt_ is huge and my _thighs_ , Kurt have you _looked_ at my thighs lately?"

 "... _nightly, Katzchen_ , I don't see..."

 "I don't even come _close_ to comparing," She was on a roll now, bulldozing right past his quiet objections, attention moving back to the mirror so that she could attempt to remove any of perceived flaws with the laser heat of her angry eyes, focused through the iris of the glass. "The whole _team_ , everyone's just so..." Lacking a word for what she meant, Kitty brought her hands up to gesture near her chest, indicating a bosom significantly larger than the one she sported. She sighed a moment later and let her hands drop again. "They're _so_ , Kurt, they're _all so._ Sometimes I look in the mirror and all I see is that little girl."

"That isn't what I see."

Kitty made a bitter sound in the front of her mouth, and Kurt tipped his head to the side, studying her troubled expression from the mirror. Slowly, deliberately, he put his hands against the lines of her ribs and then slid them up and forward, until he was cupping one breast in each hand. There was precious little _sexual_ about the gesture, something instead more _evaluative_ , as if he were measuring the merit of this part of her body. She was right on one tiny point--her breasts _weren't_ that large, as compared to those of some of their teammates. She was never going to shop in the double-letter section of Victoria's Secret. Still, in the equation of Kitty's bust and his hands, they were _just right_ , just large enough that he could hold the soft weight of one against oversized palm and let his fingers curl up and around. Even through the lace of her bra he could feel the warmth of her skin, and he knew it took precious little attention with his fingertips to encourage that same skin to goosebump, to make her arch her back just a little and press the points of them into his handprint... "If you were in a better mood, I think, this is where I would tell you about the shortage of perfect breasts in the world, and that it is a pity to so much as even _slander_ yours. I don't know what you think I would do with much more than this, other than _suffocate_ , perhaps."

She dropped her gaze a little to watch the motion of his thumbs over the tops of each breast, near her collarbone, and for a moment Kurt couldn't see her expression well enough to read it. "You didn't seem to mind too much when it was Amanda or Cerise."

"Mmm, that isn't what I saw in _them_ , either."

Kitty was quiet, head bowed, for the span of ten heartbeats or more before she finally lifted her face, looking back to Kurt's eyes. He could tell that she was far closer to tears than she wanted to admit, and the idea of her being so troubled by her body made his heart shudder just a little bit. "What _do_ you see in me, then?" She asked, her voice terribly fragile for how seemingly unnecessary the question was to him.

He gave a soft, purring sound of thought in the back of his throat, pretending to take time to consider the answer that was always _right there_ , right at the tip of his tongue, just waiting for someone to ask him just _what_ was so _wonderful_ about this woman who had burrowed herself so far into his heart and made such a fortress there he was certain there would be no usurping her. He traced his left hand along the inside of Kitty's corresponding breast, tapping the pad of his first finger against her sternum gently when he came to it. "I see a woman with _fine_ breasts, which I will grant are not nearly so large as her heart but are the best framework for it I could imagine, and I am a _very_ imaginative man."

Kurt moved his hands, then, sweeping them around the side of Kitty's chest and instead lifting her arms with them, running his fingers along their undersides gently. He coaxed her to bring them up to line up with her shoulders, slowly emphasizing the muscles that showed under her skin as she did. "I see a woman with arms so strong she can carry a full-grown man much heavier than herself as far as she has to, to see him safe, so strong that she can drag him free of the vacuum grip of space and inertia, but that still don't do even the smallest ounce of credit to the strength of her courage or her convictions, with which she could hold up the world if she wanted to."

Blue hands drifted lower, leaving Kitty's arms behind to sweep over the curve of her side and come to rest just below her hips, the long fingers of each one stretched out along her thighs. "I see a woman with such power and grace in her legs, I think she must be capable of dancing across the whole world, that I have known no better place in all this life or the hither-after than when I am wrapped up in them and allowed to leave or stay at the lady's pleasure, surrendered to her wisdom rather than my own."

Gradually, he brought his hands forward in a final gesture, allowing himself to rest one open palm against the flat span of Kitty's stomach and the other palm against the back of his own hand. "I see a constant compliment to my best qualities, I see a woman so much smarter than I am I cannot concieve of the gulf, let alone the heights you reach. I see my _partner_ , in crime and in charity, I see my lover, I see my _love_ , made manifest and with gentle hands. I see a woman so much a part of _me_ that I cannot even begin to understand how she could think, for an instant, I might be interested in _severing that_ just to feel the ache of what I'd lost for the rest of my days."

Kitty laughed, almost bashful, and raised both hands to slip them behind Kurt's head, knitting her fingers into the curls near the top of his neck. She leaned her weight back into his body, just a little bit, and smiled at his reflection in the mirror, the doubt chased away by a warm, impish light. "You dork. I notice you didn't say anything about my butt."

Kurt's own laughter filled the room, and he moved one hand to give the butt in question a healthy pinch. "Well, it hasn't got a _tail_ , but nobody's perfect."


	2. Chapter 2

Kitty's first clue that something was wrong was something she couldn't quantify. There was a quality to the air in Kurt's suite that immediately put her on edge, the faintest taste that she would later realize was the afterimage of _blood_ , barely present in the air. She phased almost instinctively, her features drawing down into a dark, angry frown as she moved through the sitting room and then the bedroom of the suite itself to find herself slipping through the closed door of the bathroom.

The mirror over the sink was broken, shattered glass in a still-life cascade down from the medicine cabinet into the sink itself. There was no blood on it, so it immediately passed out of the realm of important as Kitty turned her head to take in the rest of the room. Most of it was in order, but there was a curiously haphazard pile of clothing--Kurt's--in the corner, looking as if he'd disrobed in a hurry. That confused her, and she was just about to retreat back through the door to figure out where he'd _gone_ when she caught, just out of the corner of her ear, the huffling sound of his voice sucking air into his lungs and trying not to cry in the process.

Kitty frowned. She took a step forward and solidified as soon as she was free of the door.

Even knowing what she was looking for, it took her a long time to find him, and only then she only managed by the treason of his tail, slithering out of the light into the space behind the clawfoot tub and trying to stay out of sight. Her heart started to tap more insistently at the inside of her ribcage, but she steeled her resolve and instead crept to the side of the tub, crouching in order to peer around it into the darkened corner.

Two measures until her eyes adjusted. Another until Kitty could finally _just_ make out Kurt's outline, made nearly nonexistent by his mutation in the shadow of the porcelain. She wasn't even sure how he had _fit_ himself into that space; her best estimation had him as a tangle of limbs most other people wouldn't be able to acquire, both arms gripping around his upper torso and face trying to hide behind the shelter of one knee. He was staring at her with wide, wild eyes, the only part of him bright enough to see well. He'd been crying. He'd been crying a _lot_.

She reached out to try and take his hand and help him out of the tiny space he'd wedged himself into, but Kurt jerked away, slamming instead into the wall behind him. His head shook almost violently back and forth, tail curling tighter around himself as if he could squeeze all the life out of his body with it. " _Nein, nein,_ I do not...you deserve..."

Her teeth gritted together without Kitty's real intention to grit them, molars against molars. Her frown intensified, and Kitty phased again, to reach _through_ the tub and grab on to the nearest piece of Kurt's naked body. His body soon made incorporeal as well, there was little he could do to stop her from dragging him out into the light. As soon as she was able, she let his body solidify again so that she could reach up and take the sides of his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. Kurt was trying his damnedest to stay curled up tight and she was trying just as hard not to let him. "I deserve _what_ , something other than what I want?"

 

"No, I did not mean that, I meant only..." He looked away from her, unable to turn his head but able to dart his eyes to the side, and for a second Kitty looked down, frustrated and unsure what to say. She realized as she did that he was _bleeding_ from one of his knuckles, and the more she scrutinized the wound from afar the more she was certain it wasn't from the mirror. No, he'd done that to himself with his _teeth_. He'd bitten himself so hard he'd bled. Something clenched tight in her gut.

She took a deep breath in. "Kurt, why would you do this to yourself?"

"Have you _looked_ at me lately, Kitty?"

"I look at you every day. Don't you think I do? I look at you and I love what I see."

The sound he made walked the razor edge between laughter and a sob, and it broke her heart as surely as it made her _angry_. Kitty gave his head a little shake, forcing him to look back at her face. "Don't you laugh at my love, don't you _dare_. Listen to me, Kurt, you listen good. I've told you this before but apparently it didn't stick so you'd better have your ears open this time. _I love you_. I love all of you, I don't love you in _spite_ of anything. I love your curly hair and your curly tail and the way your mouth gets all curly when you're thinking of something naughty."

She moved one hand to brush her fingertips against the delicate edge of his ear, rubbing it between her fingers as if the gesture might bring him comfort. "I love your pointy ears and your pointy nose and your pointy teeth and your pointed little comments when you want someone to really _think_. I love the color of your eyes and the color of your fur and the color of the heart you wear on your sleeve."

The gesture seemed to be working; some of the tension had already bleed out of Kurt's shoulders, and his eyes started to hood just a little bit, head leaning towards her hand. Kitty slid the other one down to cup along his jawline, stroking along the grain of his fur. "I love your enormous hands and your enormous feet and your enormous heart and everything _else_ about you that's enormous, I love how your fur tickles the small of my back when my PJ shirt rides up and you decide it's time to cuddle. I love how you always smell a little bit like a wood fire and a little bit like a cinnamon bun. I love that you'll literally drop anything to fence or watch movies with me, I love how your heart has never faltered except when it looked at itself. Kurt..."

Kitty found herself shaking her head, biting at her bottom lip against a sudden flood of tears she couldn't quite argue away. "I love you _so much_ , you're the best man I've ever known, and fuck anyone, _fuck_ anyone who tries to tell you differently just because you don't look like they want you to look. I love you for _how_ you are, for _who_ you are, why would you ever try and tell me that was _wrong_? Do you have any idea how much it _hurts_ to find you in here like this, to think you might be doing this _all the time_ and I didn't notice, that... Do you think I'm lying to you?"

He shook his head, eyes squeezing shut against his own tears. "No, I..."

"Kurt, look at me."

Kitty waited until he had, until they were both crying, and until it didn't matter. "Please don't do this to yourself. Okay? It's not...it's _not_ okay. It's not true. This isn't the truth. The truth is I love you and if you ever, if you _ever_ feel like you need to do this, if you feel like you've got to pick yourself apart to find the seams because you don't feel _real enough_ for some jerk on the street, come find me. I'll remind you, I'll remind you so much you can't forget, you're my _fuzzy elf_ and I don't _want_ you any other way. _Please_."

"Oh, _Katzchen_." He pitched forward then, and she caught him, as she always had, as she always would. She cradled his head against the top of her chest and tucked her chin into his wild curls, fingers soothing at his shoulders and hair and ears until he could feel like _himself_ again, and not like he had to flog away whatever demon had never lived in his skin at all.


End file.
